The Old Mule

Marin County

After three thousand miles
we crossed the Golden Gate
in a terror of words, you waved
the shaving cream at me, let it off.

Five hundred miles back,
I checked the oil in the truck,
forgot to latch the hood.
We were twenty, then.

Front slammed upright,
weaved toward interstate grass,
laughing like goats.

Zappa jammed in the player,
radio lost. Made our way through
Durango, the four corners, porcupine
laid up by the fish river. We took a quill,

and picked cactus sticks
from the side of Joshua Tree,
almost there.

Clothes unbundled, litter of maps. Sequoia,
low river site, we parked on stones
and crawled in the back.

Policeman back in Alabama
marveled at our scene, this youth,
wondered where we were headed:
California. He let us go.

Dolores

Down through the Mission
cold Sunday, 16th street,
you gone, fog hung over
Bolinas, Reyes, this
bay of sails and rock.
Mind back to our trip
through the 101
to gardens with
Dahlias and stone walk,
pasture above the sea.
The Inn, wood smoke
sheets and breakfast
near a fire. At dark
we walked the sand
branch of an inland stream,
found a bench by water,
put out our chests,
our young red arms.
And back here the
house is loud
with space. Books
are hard to open,
all those sentences
and muttered prayers.
Photographs between
pages, a turn,
a turn of season.
Grey light through
Fall mulberry trees,
a scent of bay.
I carry bottles
to the bin today,
wait for tomrrow.

April

I had tigers
in my arms last night,
pitch concrete walk
along the side of an ocean—
rusted rails where I crooked
my arms through and bent out
toward lights moving past.
Hung there in the cool slide
of past midnight, hot coil
in my chest, lungs open for sea.

47°58′10″N, 123°29′54″W

Smoke of rain,
tarp tent back and
forth, clothes and feet,
down bag to the chin.
We faced west as the light
went out, made way
through a moss of old
sounds. Feet on pine needles—
a breath of movement,
padded fall.

Names rolled up
humid throats,
the organics of before:
Skokomish, Queets.
Up through Shine Tidelands,
and the Straight, Juan de Fuca,
Greek beneath Spanish sails,
he who came and lost.
His Anian, eel of water,
north to south. Olympia.

One who waits with spirits,
they said.
Suquamish. Chehalis.
Salishan.

Arizona

I spent my last memory
in a washed out bar
on the edge of Mississippi,
and let everything go,
everything, and bought a bus
ticket for Phoenix, or someplace
farther, and went there. This
was the middle of July, 1989,
and my heart was in my sleeves,
and my leather boots bent up
at the toe, and my plans
had changed so many times
I could not remember
where I was supposed to be.
So I left. As the bus departed,
I finally caught a painted scene
of our sleeping city, her waters
wild rivers of blue, homes adrift,
and I imagined your window,
and pretended that I could see
right in, observe your face in sleep,
not dreaming of me, and not
knowing that by the heavy pull
of your work Monday I would be
a wheel above some highway,
somewhere, without my glasses,
old thoughts, or my coat.

Broward County

I woke up to the sound of cars on wet roads. That is a good thing. It was dry and I like the rain. And my office is a window in to another kind of living, phones and plans and sheets. But my mind wanders to the Old Knob trail in Pisgah Forest, one of the most beautiful National Parks in our hemisphere. And what, these days, is not measured in half globes.

When I was more foolish than I am now, which is a feat in and of itself, a friend and I lugged huge packs stuffed with canned bake beans, pasta sauce, weed and beer up a 5,000 foot ascent of trail with double diamond markings (the meaning was lost on us at the start). When we got to the top, delirious and hungry, we were shocked to find that our ten day camp-out would be accomplished without the service of the new Whisper Lite camp stove which was tucked away at the bottom of the hill in the back of my buddy's Buick. We pressed on, drank sour water, got passed en ruote by a man no less than 90, got stoned on a cliff and drenched in a hot tent with the vent left open. And the last night in the Narrows, a skunk ate our bread.

There are the sorts of things a person remembers. Not the easy night with a bath and wine. No. You have to get thrown out in the mix to etch something good. You have to fumble outside the normal patterns, drive somewhere you shouldn't go, fake sick and explore the Midwest, sink a boat or hike Old Knob with 80 lb bags and a saggy map.

And it is Wednesday, and I am 32, and I just paid taxes, and I enjoy how things are when the sky isn't sunny because it gives me an excuse to slow a bit, to collect.

Salts and Oils

This is such a grey Monday that I am going through motions and living with the momentum of better days.  I feel rotten, terrible and grumpy. But the weather will clear.

Anyway, this is wonderful verse by Philip Levine. I always love the way he tells stories instead of writing poems. People like to hear stories. I'm telling you, this is some of the greatest writing you will read:

Philip Levine

Salts and Oils

In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog
believing it was Peking duck. Later,
in Tampa I bunked with an insane sailor
who kept a .38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts.
In the same room were twins, oilers
from Toledo, who argued for hours
each night whose turn it was
to get breakfast and should he turn
the eggs or not. On the way north
I lived for three days on warm water
in a DC-6 with a burned out radio
on the runway at Athens, Georgia. We sang
a song, "Georgia's Big Behind," and prayed
for WWIII and complete, unconditional surrender.
Napping in an open field near Newport News,
I chewed on grass while the shadows of September
lengthened; in the distance a man hammered
on the roof of a hangar and groaned how he
was out of luck and vittles. Bummed a ride
in from Mitchell Field and had beet borscht
and white bread at 34th and 8th Avenue.
I threw up in the alley behind the YMCA
and slept until they turned me out.
I walked the bridge to Brooklyn
while the East River browned below.
A mile from Ebbetts Field, from all
that history, I found Murray, my papa's
buddy, in his greasy truck shop, polishing
replacement parts. Short, unshaven, puffed,
he strutted the filthy aisles,
a tiny Ghengis Khan. He sent out for soup
and sandwiches. The world turned on barley,
pickled meats, yellow mustard, kasha,
rye breads. It rained in October, rained
so hard I couldn't walk and smoke, so I
chewed pepsin chewing gum. The rain
spoiled Armistice Day in Lancaster, Pa.
The open cars overflowed, girls cried,
the tubas and trombones went dumb,
the floral displays shredded, the gutters
clogged with petals. Afterwards had ham
on buttered whole-wheat bread, ham
and butter for the first time
on the same day in Zanesville with snow
forecast, snow, high winds, closed roads,
solid darkness before 5 p.m. These were not
the labors of Hercules, these were not
of meat or moment to anyone but me
or destined for story or to learn from
or to make me fit to take the hand
of a toad or a toad princess or to stand
in line for food stamps. One quiet morning
at the end of my thirteenth year a little bird
with a dark head and tattered tail feathers
had come to the bedroom window and commanded
me to pass through the winding miles
of narrow dark corridors and passageways
of my growing body the filth and glory
of the palatable world. Since then I've
been going out and coming back
the way a swallow does with unerring grace
and foreknowledge because all of this
was prophesied in the final, unread book
of the Midrash and because I have to
grow up and because it pleases me.

On Learning of A Departure

for Sanders

Old friend, your boat has set off.
And I gasp for reason in these knots
and unkind winds. Painted memories
pull and turn beneath a starch grey 
lull of tide. Water against wood.
I will see you in the stars. What great land
is before you now? Not ours, not ours.
A quick gaze beyond, your travel shoes
loosened beneath a bunk, and not a word
last night as I paddled under a moon
full with your sleepy passage. New seasons,
different bloom. Help me back, once more,
before we cast you to memory. This is your
leave, and I stand to see you off, but the story
tightens, and we are a chorus of fewer men.
It is a Spring April morning, and some song
of a voice has just told me of your travel.   
Please send word when you find things
more at ease. We have breath in our lungs
here, and our bodies ache with your letting go.

---

T. Sanders McMillan IV

LEXINGTON — T. Sanders McMillan, IV, born May 21, 1974 at Ellington Air Force Base, Houston, Texas to Thomas S. McMillan, III, and Lois Eargle McMillan, died Tuesday, April 3, 2007. Mr. McMillan is survived by his wife, Mary Anne Davis McMillan, and his cherished son, Clayton Thomas McMillan, age 4, of Lexington, S.C.; his parents; and a loving extended family.

Sanders was a 1992 graduate of Lexington High School, then entered the Honors College at The University of South Carolina as a Carolina Scholar. He received his B.A. degree in 1997 and went on to receive his Masters of Earth and Environmental Resources Management (MEERM) degree. His lifelong interest in the outdoors and the environment became the impetus which allowed him to work in these fields. He was employed by Wilbur Smith and Associates as an Environmental Specialist, where he worked with Natural Resources, was an NEPA specialist, did community impact assessments, floodplain and wetland studies.

He was a member of the American Society of Wetland Scientists, the American Botanical Society, and the South Carolina Native Plants Society. He received the ACEC-NC Honorary Academy Award in 2004 and the Grand Award in 2005. He was an avid supporter of the St. Baldrick’s Foundation as a fund-raiser for children’s oncology research. Sanders was an avid kayaker, hiker, scuba diver, fisherman, and skier.

His family, in lieu of flowers, requests tributes and memorials be made in Sanders’ name either to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), P.O. Box 1267, Columbia, S.C., for it’s use in supporting public awareness of Bi-Polar Disorder, or to the St. Baldrick's Foundation, specially earmarked for research grants for children’s oncology.

The family will receive friends Sunday evening, April 8, 2007, from 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. at Caughman-Harman Funeral Home, 503 North Lake Drive, Lexington, S.C. Interment will be privately held at a later date.

April, Again

The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change.
(Richard II, 2.4.8-11)